Second Migrant Caravan to Leave From Honduras in January

A girl from Honduras waits for a present given by a nongovernmental organization outside an empty warehouse used as a shelter set up for migrants in downtown Tijuana, Mexico, Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2018. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP)

A caravan of migrants, estimated at up to 15,000 people, is set to depart from Honduras in mid-January a few months after the previous caravan, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

“They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,” said Irma Garrido of Reactiva Tijuana Foundation, which advocates for migrants.

The previous caravan left Honduras in October, and is currently stuck at the U.S. border with Mexico, with many migrants taking refuge in crowded shelters while applying for asylum in America. This new caravan likely will “stay in the south of Mexico in Chiapas and Oaxaca,” according to Garrido. “Their aim is to request work there.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador vowed that Central American migrants will find work and receive visas in Mexico, having pledged to complete multiple public works projects like a 1,500-kilometer railroad and the planting of two million trees, in an $8 billion project that likely will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the southern Mexican states.